


You Must Understand

by Golden_Ticket



Series: What's Love?! [2]
Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: AU, F/M, Pining, Reality Show AU, WLGTDWI Outtake, hot tub fun, scott always needs a minute, scott needing a minute, scott pov, so much pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-18
Updated: 2018-08-24
Packaged: 2019-06-29 04:08:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15721665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Golden_Ticket/pseuds/Golden_Ticket
Summary: Scott's POV's from "What's Love Got To Do With It?!", requested by readers ;)***For a TV-show, Scott and Tessa pretend to be a couple on a paradise island in a luxe villa.And Scott thought he'd be able to handle all that just fine.But he isn't. Oh, but he isn't.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thatonekimgirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatonekimgirl/gifts), [SandyBeaches](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SandyBeaches/gifts), [Fanficfan18](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fanficfan18/gifts), [im_ridiculous](https://archiveofourown.org/users/im_ridiculous/gifts), [fairwinds09](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairwinds09/gifts), [Vmlove511](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vmlove511/gifts), [meganseverafter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/meganseverafter/gifts), [canadianskater](https://archiveofourown.org/users/canadianskater/gifts).



> Because I got so many requests for his POV for this scene..here it is.
> 
> It can be read on it's own (even if that might be a little confusing) but I would suggest reading the original fic for context :)
> 
> This is quick and unbeta'd..I hope you like it anyway!
> 
> Find the gif to retweet here: https://twitter.com/EllieCarina/status/1030753660756742147

Seeing Tessa in that flimsy navy thing she calls a bikini is still not something he'd say he's all the way used to. Her panties roll down a bit as she eases herself into the hot tub and Scott has to make a fist to keep from reaching for them -to pull them up or maybe all the way down- he's not really sure which he wants to do, really. He feels drab and stocky getting in after her, the warm water doing nothing to disperse the tension in his groin. He wonders if his dick is ever going to fully relax while they're here. Somehow he doubts it. See, he's been on edge all week. Pretending to be her boyfriend has had the unforeseen side effect of making him lose his fucking mind a bit more every day. He wasn't expecting that.

He thought he could handle it. He thought he would be fine kissing her a little bit and still able to function like a normal human being, to function like Scott, Tessa's best friend. Who has his priorities in order and his decisions made, sensible decisions, smart ones. Decisions that will ensure he'll never foolishly lose her to his own hubris and asshole-ery. It's just that it was okay staying away from her before when he had no idea what really kissing her was like. What it was like when she giggled at his jokes looking at him like he hung the stars, what it was like to have her tease him, put her hand on his dick in the back of a car. It was okay staying away when he didn't know that she liked being submissive, that —on occasion— she liked getting spanked (when he found out about that he almost physically toppled over, eventhough he was lying down at the time). It was okay to remain distant when he had no idea that she made those high-pitched, breathy little noises when he scratched at her scalp as he was kissing her and pulling her close.

 

And he can't handle that. He's trying...but he keeps messing up, keeps going in harder than he should, keeps biting off more than he can chew. Selfishly chasing the high of touching her and being close, closer, closer yet. It's not good, he's not being good. He's not being smart, even if that was what he told her back in London at that stupid _Forever 21._  

 

But this isn't smart. Leering at her not even trying to keep his dick down, only paying a smidge of attention as Tessa turns to Greg to listen to the cameraman instruct her on what he wants her to do for the shot after he's told him to just sit down. _Not a problem_ , Greg, he thinks. _I'll just sit here and stare at Tessa, I haven't been able to do anything else for two days anyway now._

“...Tess, can you sit on him, like face to face?” Greg says from where he crouches on the ground behind Scott's head, the camera a black, clunky shadow at his back. 

 _Wait a sec, did he just say 'sit on him'? Shit. Shit, shit, shit._ She can't sit on him, he has a boner! 

“I’m just gonna get a little b-roll but I need a good angle, so I need you close together," Greg goes on but Scott barely pays attention. The other man's words are just bubbles bursting at the edge of his consciousness, saying something about using the camera's mic, to talk like it's Tuesday instead of Sunday because they are shooting this bit for the first episode, something something something 'whatever just talk for a while'. _Ah-huh_. Scott doesn't know how talking works anymore because then Tessa is doing as she was told and easily climbs on top of him. He is in a trance when she does, his arms closing around her hips on autopilot. _Shit._ She's so close to where he's hard, she's gonna _know._

 

“I don’t have you in the frame yet, Tess,” Greg mutters from behind the lens. “Can you sit a little closer?”

Tessa nods and follows the order, rocking closer against Scott’s stomach and inevitably makes contact. He only feels the friction and next thing he knows, the visual of her straddling him, sitting on his lap like a good girl, does the rest. He won't be able to talk himself down to even half-mast now. He's lost. He wants her and his fucking body is very eager to have her know about it. He feels her there and locks his eyes on hers, an apology already making its way up his throat when she moves ever so slightly, the direction clearly backwards and he can't have that. (This is one of those moments when he should be smart but he isn't.) He swallows hard, squeezes her tighter, digging his nails into her skin and looks at her on top of him with the urgency of a man pleading for his life. And Tessa stays right where she is. 

 

“So I just talk now?” She asks Greg, her eyes still on Scott’s.

“Yeah, don’t think too much about it,” their cameraman says.

“You excited for the sharks?” His fake girlfriend asks him and despite the fact that he's already seen the sharks and it was awesome, if it really was Tuesday and he hadn't yet, he wouldn't give a shit about the damn sharks. Take the whole ocean for all he cares, Tessa is sitting on him. Nothing else matters, honestly.

“Mostly excited to get to stay here for a while longer,” he says, bone-deep honest and catches a couple of wet strands of her hair to roll between his fingers. He loves touching her hair, loves how they feel, loves to imagine pulling on it hard to make her head fall back, revealing her long, graceful neck so he can bite his marks into it. He just watches her, not caring at all how needy and ridiculous he must look. He just wants to take this moment for himself. He forgets the world around them, completely on purpose. Fuck Greg and his camera and the TV Show and the lying and everything. This is real. It can be real, just as long as they're in this stupid hot tub, he can have her. And pretend. And it can be save there, can maybe, if he is strong enough, stay there too. Here, immersed in their "performance" he can love her like he does. He can be gentle and tactile and he can tell her that he loves her without being afraid that it will ruin everything.

 

That's more than he expected he ever got to do. So he can take whatever fallout comes after. How it will hurt to have to let her go again and return to the real world. Where Tessa and Scott are best friends and business partners. Not a boy and a girl. Not a boy who adjusts the girl on his body, pulling her closer yet so she can feel exactly what she's doing to him. But now they are. Now she has her legs spread wide over his hips and his erection is trapped between them, just there at the apex of her thighs where he craves friction more than anything. He knows it's selfish and base and borderline nonconsensual, maybe, and that thought makes him feel instantly terrible to pulls her head to him, pressing a kiss for cover into the nape of her neck. 

"I'm sorry," he whispers into her ear, taking his hands off of her hips under water so she knows she can scoot back from him if she's uncomfortable.

 Only she doesn't move away. Instead she rolls her hips against him. And, _oh, fuck, right there._ He's instantly brainless, just a body anymore. A body that wants to wrap around hers more than anything.

 

“It’s okay,” she whispers back, leans out to kiss his cheek and then studies him, her features a little bit wild. Her eyes are dark, looking like she likes it, like she likes feeling him hard and throbbing between her legs. He wants her more than he's ever wanted anybody. Enough to crack open.  

“I’m glad we’re doing this together,” she says louder, her voice even and he thinks that might be exclusively for the camera. He doesn't want that. He doesn't want to act now. He wants to be real because this is the only place he can be. He decides to do it then, to tell her what he's been thinking the last couple of days (and hell, the last couple of years, too, who is he kidding?!). Where's the harm in it? He can say it here. The love is real here. He gets to show her here. So he does.

“Me too,” he breathes and then lets go to speak his mind for once. “God, you’re so beautiful. Do I tell you that enough?” He shakes his head at her, unable to believe that she's there with him, that she is so close now. "You’re so fucking gorgeous...I’m so crazy about you.” His hands tug at her hips again and she gasps, _God_ , she gasps like she likes it and he can't help digging his fingers into her at all, scratching and pushing in deep into her flesh like a mad man. “Shit, T. I could...eat you alive.” He really could, he wants to. He wants to tell Greg to go away, carry her out of the tub and the three, four paces into their room and bury his head between her legs and love her with his mouth and hands until she cries out his name, until she comes on his tongue.

 

Jesus, he wants to kiss her. He _needs_ to kiss her. 

 

The only worry is that Greg might break the moment because they've been kissing so much and Scott decides to make sure this doesn't happen. This requires a great lot of his mental capacities, depleted as they are at the moment, but he manages to un-cloud his mind for a second, long enough to ask him if it's okay if they kiss, or if they shouldn't because the "Tessa & Scott" material racked up so far is already 70% kissing.

 

 _Please don't say no_ , Scott prays.

 

When Greg answers: “Do whatever comes naturally, the editors will choose what they want,” Scott has already forgotten he exists (pushing the weirdness of the fact that there is a grown man and a TV camera there still no matter if Scott acknowledges them or not far from his mind). There's only Tessa now.

 

 

“Come here,” he half-breathes, half-growls, and she kisses him first. It still messes with him when she kisses him. When she's the one to deepen it like she does, grazing his lips with her teeth to make her open up and she starts grinding on him, making his head explode. But then again he's seen nothing yet until the point that she stops moving her lips against his to whisper a tiny, dirty, _fucking_ "Yes, sir," into his mouth.

 

And he _can't._ He just _can't._

 

He growls, can't help himself. Her voice sent such a rush through him, his hips snap up into hers on their own, thrusting hard and he wishes he could be inside her now, bury himself, spend himself until he's dissolved completely into her. He's not going to sleep with her, he won't, because it would fuck everything up and he could never come back from it, but God, does he want to. He wants her, he wants her to say 'Yes, sir,' to him every night for the rest of his life and watch her revel in that first moment that he sinks his cock inside her until he fucking dies.

Her response to him bucking into her is startling and fast. It's what kills him most about this whole thing. How eager she is to meet him there, how much he knows she wants him, too. Dealing with the fact that he is pretty sure he's completely fucked-in-love with her is that much harder knowing that she has feelings for him as well. On some level, he's always known that periodically, Tessa wanted him and when he was younger that just gave him cocky confidence. Then a couple of years ago it had started scaring him. Because he never noticed falling in love with her until the day he thought "Of course, it's Tessa, it's always been Tessa!" and then in the next moment "You can never have her or you're going to lose her."

 

 

That would be a lot easier to accept if Tessa had no interest in him. But she does. She does and now she's kissing him and rubbing up on him, grinding her hips against his dick and the friction drives him out of his mind. He moves to match her, to dry-fuck her if he never gets to for real and he's still so, so, _so_ fucking tempted to just rip down his trunks, push her bikini bottoms to the side and just have her impale herself on him. He wants nothing more than to sit in the warm, bubbly water and watch her face twist into pleasure as she rides his dick. He's trying so hard to keep quiet.

He nearly moans and feels the effort it takes for her not to, and failing time and time again with those little sounds she can't fight. He's doing this. He's making her sigh and arch into him and maybe it's that thought that starts the chain-reaction he's too startled by to stop. She kisses him and rocks down hard on his cock and she almost groans at the moment of contact. That's when Scott cracks. The orgasm hardly builds, it just comes, crashes into him, washing over him. He can't do anything, can't help but ride it out, spilling into his trunks, twitching ridiculously against her crotch on top of him. _Fuck._

 

His eyes fly open when he comes and his head falls back as he bites his lips shut to keep from moaning her name. _Tessa._ The next couple of seconds are a blur.

Oh God. Oh Jesus, he just came in his swim trunks. That just happened. He just had an orgasm and he wasn't even in her, wasn't even naked. Hotly and mortified, he wonders if she noticed. A question he doesn't have to wait long to get answered, because then she opens her eyes to him. She looks like she's trying to figure out of he did, like she's not sure.

 

 _I did_ , he wants to tell her. _I did, and I'm sorry._

 

And because he can't find the words, he tries to say it with his face. With Tessa being Tessa, she understands, because she always does, and gives him exactly what he needs, which is a soft kiss on the forehead, tender like he might break, and leans out again. Acceptance on her face, of him and them and the fact that he just came beneath her like a school-boy, and she still looks at him like he can do no wrong. _Fuck_ , he loves her. He's _so_ in love with her. He can feel it pull around his eyes, how much he does, how he might cry from how much he does. He loves her more than he's ever loved another living soul. There's never going to be anybody else for him, ever. She's the one.

 

 

“I think we’ve got enough, guys,” Greg says, barely audible from some three planets over. “Thanks.”

Scott watches Tessa sigh and nod. And then she staggers off of him and he can't help but stare at her. He doesn't want this to end, wants to tell Greg to keep filming so she doesn't go away, so he can keep touching her under the guise of pretending, when really he is everything but. At the same time he wants her all on her own, away from the rest of the world and separate from the future. So he can make love to her, make her feel good and cherished and desired for the whole night or maybe the entire next year. And he wants to put her on a plane back to Canada, march her to City Hall and give her his last name. 

She's his best friend and she's the love of his life. And he's gonna have to fight that with all he's worth if he wants to keep her in his life. 

 

Only he has no idea how.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is Scott's POV from the last bed-scene of chapter 5.
> 
> Requested by: Tessasscott, Stormborn93, Meganseverafter, Jezzie, SandyBeaches, im_ridiculous
> 
> Note: These are always quick, unbeta'd vignettes...more headcanons than anything and there will be mistakes, so please forgive me for that <3

“I’m sorry about that, you know,” he says after a long moment, trying to gather up the courage to do so. It helps that it's dark now, so she can't see his red ears. “I don’t know how that happened.”

 

He's full of shit. Of course he knows how it happened. He thrust his dick against her through their swimsuits, letting her kiss him until he forgot his last name. That's how it happened. And he'd been too selfish not to seize the moment for all it was worth, like a child in a candy store, gorging himself until he popped.

 

“It’s okay,” she shrugs, he can see it in the faint light coming in from the window, her graceful features set in bluish hues. “It’s a boy thing. Happens. Why not get something out of it? All that effort must be good for something. A little orgasm can’t hurt…”

 

 _Wait a minute, what?!_ It's a boy thing? Get something out of it? A little orgasm can't hurt? There are two instant reactions to whatever it is she is trying to tell him with this. They're both equally strong and none really wins out. Firstly, she believes him coming in his pants from her merely sitting on him was a random dude-body-function thing? Like it had nothing to do with the fact that it was her there with him? Is she really that blind? (Or did he really lie this well all these years? Keep his distance so diligently that she doesn't know at all how she's everything to him?) And secondly, is she insinuating that he is using her for orgasms? That on top of bringing her here to play his girlfriend, he's now using her to get his thrills? Or is it different...is she...maybe (and his heart beats faster just at the thought)...is she saying that she would like for both of them to get some orgasms out of it all? Like a friends-with-benefits thing? He can't do that, he can't sleep with her. But if she's really asking that, he might not be able to say no.

 

“I...that’s not...I don’t,” he sputters out and doesn't know which theory he would like for her to comment on. Which results in him blathering like a fool. “Do you mean...I mean…”

“You okay, there?” she cackles, teasing, and he's a little bit pissed off that she's laughing at him but his body is undeterred, her simply using the word "orgasm" enough to send him into a tailspin that does _not_ end.

“No,” he says, surprising himself with how on edge it sounds, and clears his throat to battle that. “I think I’m gonna go for a walk.”

 

He needs to get out of there. She's too close and he's too keyed up. And no matter what the hell she just meant with her little jokes, if she goes smug and playful on him now, he won't be able to keep his head. If she does, he's gonna wanna play. He's going to want to kiss the smugness off her face and _play_ with her until she whimpers and submits to him, until the laugh at him will stick in her throat and turn into something else entirely. If she teases him for getting weak about her, he'll get competetive and then so help him God, he'll ruin everything trying to make her weak for him.

“Everything good?” Tessa asks, like a shot after he's spoken, disturbing his hot-blooded spiralling. “It was just a joke, I didn’t mean to—”

 

The way her voice breaks on it, how afraid she sounds suddenly, breaks him open. She thinks she's made him mad and goes right into Tessa-Smoothing-Things-Over protocol, like she had since they were children, sponging up his moods with her everlasting patience. He can't take that right now. He can't stand that she thinks he's angry at her, he isn't. He's been trying to apologise to her, God dammit. But now she thinks he'd get mad at her for pulling his leg a little and potentially that he wants to use her for sex like the most basic asshole and that's not okay. He can't live with that, if that's what she thinks.

So he does the only thing he can think of doing other than telling her everything, that he loves her and always will, that she can do no wrong in his eyes and that she is the only woman he ever wanted to be with this way, the way that goes bone deep, like it's a part of his DNA to desire her. He talks with his body, pulling her in, pushing himself up close to her side and doesn't care that he's hard. Maybe it's good for something, so she'll understand that it's not random, it's not just a body-thing but a Tessa-thing for him. That he'll be wanting her even in the cold dead earth one day, for fucking ever.

 

He grabs her head and kisses her temple, hovering close after and tenses every muscle so he doesn't do more. So he is able to leave her again. It's the hardest thing he's had to do in a very long time.

“I know, Tess,” he exhales, dimly aware that he is shaking from the effort not to lose his head, not to undress her as fast as he possibly can and claim her with all he's worth. “I’ll be back in a bit. Don’t wait up, okay?”

A second later, he moves away from her. So rapidly that the loss of her flashing hot body leaves him shivering, cold and bereft. He doesn’t say another thing, just charges up ahead to the glass doors that face into the yard and pushes one open, slipping out. Like fleeing the scene of a crime, he walks fast until finally breaking into a jog out at the shoreline and eventually sprints, hard and fast (his groin hurting because running with a boner is a bitch) and he doesn't stop running for a long time.

 

It's pitch dark, only the moon casting a long line of white light on the ocean when he plops down on the sand, looking at the horizon. He almost forgot himself in there. He didn't, and he won't, but only because he walked away. He thinks talking to Tessa about sex must really get off the table. They can do the tactile things for the cameras but he can't listen to her talk about spanking and orgasms anymore. It messes with his brain too much. He can't allow himself any weakness, can't lose his head with her. 

 

He resolves to be better, the whole way back to their bed. She's soundly asleep when he gets back in. She's breathtaking even when she's dead to the world. He wishes so fervently that he could just cuddle close to her, folding himself around her frame and as he puts his arm under his pillow and turns to his side, his movements make the sheets release what scent of hers has seeped into them. He thinks he might lose his mind. His dumb, relentless cock is making a mockery of his brain, his struggling, trying-to-be-better brain. In a heartbeat, he's even harder than before-just lying beside her unravels him now, apparently.

"I want you so bad, T," he breathes, whispering under his breath, and picks up the one-sided conversation he's started with her sleeping form the week before. _He_ can't sleep, hasn't been able to since they got there, really, so he might as well get those things off his chest that he keeps so tightly bottled while he lies awake beside her, going insane with not being able to touch her. (And thank God that the night vision cam in their room records no audio because the night before he just about spilled his entire guts first to sleeping Tessa and then to the doll, for whatever reason.)

"It's not because I'm a guy and I can't control myself...it's about you," he continues, dropping his voice to nearly nothing, to make sure he doesn't wake her. "I'm so fucking gone for you. I'm so hard, like it's ridiculous. If you were awake now, you'd be so grossed out. It's worse than when I was fifteen. But it's not just that I wanna have sex with you, you know? It's more than that. It's the whole future. Seeing you with Marnie, that killed me today. I want nobody else to be the mother of my children, just you. Always just you, T. And I have no idea what to do. I don't know. I'm so...lost. I'm so sorry."

 

What more can he say? He got himself into this mess. Now he has to deal with it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> He is a goooooooooner.......


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Surprise! I had a slightly longer break and could bust this out before I leave on vacation tomorrow.
> 
> Due to the time crunch, this has been written in a hurry and will have so many mistakes, I hope you will just correct them all in your heads and we can go on pretending I'm not a hot mess!
> 
> I hope you like it!!!
> 
> The POV is of course as requested from the last chapter of #whatslovefic :)

Tessa’s voice still echoes in the room after she’s turned on her sneaker-ed heel and left him in the mess he’s made of things. “We already are,” she had said.

 

_We already are messed up._

 

Scott falls back onto the bed, his head hitting the pillow hard enough to make his head spin, which he thinks he deserves, and tries to figure out where he went wrong precisely in the last 24 hours.

 

He thinks the first strike was forgetting himself at the boutique in the city. Actually all his strikes where him forgetting himself, just the places varied. The reason didn’t. The reason was always Tessa and how hard she made it to stay responsible and smart.

 

Anyway...Strike One:

 

Tessa walked out of the dressing rooms with a tight, tight, tight red dress on, managing to look equal parts sinful and innocent (this very confusing brand of opposites only she can pull off). He’d stood in front of her like an asshole unable to take his eyes off of her. God, she was so beautiful. Always, not just then, but then she was wearing red and she hardly ever wore red and it did a number on him.

 

“Not good?” she asked, looking down on herself as if she feared something was amiss.

“No,” he breathed, because there was nothing wrong with her, quite the opposite, everything was just so _right_ , from her boobs all round and firm and perfect to the way her belly button piercing made a little bulge in the tight-fitting dress. She looked amazing and he was being a leering weirdo. “It’s...I like it. You don’t wear red a lot.”

“It’s not really my colour,” she shrugged and he had to laugh.

 

It was her self-deprecation, her lack of confidence in how absolutely stunning she looked, that drove him forward more than anything. Even if he’d known he shouldn’t, that he did not have the cover or the excuse of being filmed. But she beckoned, that tiny spaghetti strap sitting on her right shoulder, begging to be touched.

“Yeah, no, that’s absolutely your colour,” he muttered and brushed his fingertips against the fabric, stepping up close to her because he liked pain. “I don’t know how to get through this week, T.” (That thing he said because he was an idiot.)

_What the hell, Scott?_

“What do you mean?” she asked him but he didn’t have an answer. He had nothing in his head at that moment, nothing but the wild urge to hook his fingers around the strap until it was caught within his fist. And to pull her in with it, while his other hand landed on her face on its own accord, cupped it softly, caressing her gentle enough to make his own heart snap open. He wanted nothing more than her skin under his fingers forever.

“I missed seeing you dance,” he said before he could stop himself, his head still spinning from watching her turn and twirl, from seeing her strong muscles roll under her skin when they danced, following the lines of her body as she extended her arms and legs and bent herself to his shape. “You’re a terrific dancer.”

“You’re not so bad yourself,” she told him, her voice unsteady and her gorgeous green eyes searched for something to hold onto in his. He had nothing. He couldn’t offer her a grip because he needed it all for himself.

 

He nearly kissed her. It had almost happened. He doesn’t really know how he stopped honestly. He barely processed paying for their clothes or meeting Greg outside, or going home. It was easier when she took the dress off but all he wanted to do for the remainder of the day was to take off everything else she would ever put on ever again, too. He'd do it for her, too, she would never have to use her own hands to get undressed again.

 

Strike Two was giving in to her challenge the next day at dance practice. To play along with whatever she was doing on that last day of the rehearsals. He knew she was gunning for something, he wasn’t stupid. But in the morning, he’d still been steadfast. The thing is: Tessa has no idea what she wants. That is to say, she knows she wants him (he thinks) but she doesn’t know that she shouldn’t. That maybe he turns her on (which is ridiculous because he’s an idiot and she is... _Tessa_ ) but she shouldn’t want to follow up on that.

 

He’s not worthy, he knows that without an ounce of self-pity, it’s just a fact. She might think she desires him but really, he’s just _there_. He’s always been there and they get along and she’s confused. She bound to be confused, there's no way she is of sound mind wanting him like that. He’s not good for her, he would never be good. He’d made her sad and mad and upset enough times in their life together that she should know that. Certainly enough times for him to be sure.

 

Either way, he _knew_ all this and he had used his time well trying to get it together with her that last week. To follow the decision he’d made regarding them. That, no matter how much he loved her and no matter how much it killed him, he would keep his distance. Then...after this was over he would sit her down and explain why they couldn’t be together. Why he couldn’t bear it. And that he loved her more than life and just wanted her to be happy, always.

 

Except when in the afternoon, after filming some dreadfully fake talking heads-segments about how they weren’t sure they would win the challenge (they knew they would...obviously they knew), Scott did not want to make Tessa happy. Because Tessa was getting close to him, closer than the choreography needed, closer than his body could handle and apparently what she believed would make her happy would be him losing himself in her. He had started to control his reactions to her better and better, so he kept everything somewhat down...but he could feel his self control slipping all the same.

 

She was teasing him, making him headless and a little insane and when Marie-France and Patch left them to finish their practice on their own at night, he wanted to know why. Especially in the face of her self-satisfied smirk up at him that tugged at his spite. She was toying with him and having a golly good time. It made something at the back of his spine coil together in piquedness to rise up to the challenge.

 

“What are you doing?” he asked her, trying to be a little bit intimidating so she would maybe stop trying to drive him out of his mind.

“Nothing,” she said innocently, blinking at him from under her lashes and licking her lips in a move that should get her a penalty. If this was hockey, he’d take her off the ice.

 

Fuck, he would _take_ her off of the ice. In the change room, the broom closet, wherever.

 

“Tess,” he warned, tightening his grip on her in the dance hold.

 

_Don’t tempt me. Don’t challenge me._

 

“We’re just dancing, Scott,” she said, a dangerous flicker in her eye. “Aren’t we?”

He stared at her, squared his jaw, and he felt something fiery pushing its way across his features, something almost vicious. He tried to fight it...but she got him by the balls, right by his competitive streak. She wanted to play. And he forgot himself, like he had been bound to because he is weak and foolish for her, and played along.

“Well then,” he rasped, sharply digging his fingernails into her bare back and,  _fuck_ , the way her eyes fluttered closed for a second at that made it hard to even move after. “Let’s dance.”

 

He turned her clumsily  back into the steps on the music he had some trouble hearing through the rush of blood in his head and then gathered his bearings through dancing. A few steps in, he turned her sharply, assuredly once more, nudging and leading her around the room in a hold he knew was bordering on too firm. He was aware he was being wild with her, demanding, but she matched him part and parcel. The way Tessa let him lead her on the floor or the ice, had always made him weak. She was usually the one calling the shots between them, the one with the agenda and the plans and the strong opinions. But when they danced, she ceded all of the control to him, she let him move her around exactly where he wanted and it made him unhinged. It made him crave her submission, made him want to get high on it and show her...show her what she’d get for being a tease.

 

Because she was very much still teasing through it all. She finally made his keg explode —the bottle pop, so to speak— on that one move they do, a tango one, where she hooks her leg around his hip and he pulls her closer to bend her backwards. And as he was moving his arm around her torso to support her on the bend, she added a small but pronounced extra swivel to her hips. It was far enough out to push up against his dick and while doing so, Tessa brought her hand from where it was gracefully extended up to his head to grab a fistful of his hair. And then she _pulled._ And he lost it.

He couldn’t help the feral growl that left his throat, a strangled sound that grew from a whimper to a roar and he positively _ripped_ her up to him, unthinking, scratching a hard line up her back, one that would be still red in the morning, and hugged her tight to his body. Her head slotted against his clavicle bone, her hot breath in his neck. He was holding onto her with the last bit of self-control that he had, shivering with the strain from keeping his hands from ripping her leotard and tights off her body violently.

 

“Don’t do this to me,” he begged into her ear, his lips wet against the shell of it, so close to bursting.

“Do what to you, Scott?” _Fuck._ She sounded like he was already buried inside her. _Fuck, God, dammit._

Next thing he knew, he had hiked her up at her ass so her legs split around his groin and carried her quick-footed to the wall, to show her, to give her a taste. He won’t do more, can’t do more, not ever. But if she insists on provoking him, she’ll feel what he could do. What he could do to her if he deserved to, if they’d survive it, if her future happiness were none of his concern.

Each laboured breath he took resonated against her chest, each heartbeat aligning with hers, frantic and getting away from them, and when he thrusted his hips forward, just once, she felt her moan more than heard it. _Just like that baby, you have no idea what I would do to you_ , he thinks posessively, hungrily. _I’d never take my hands off of you until you scream my name and beg me to let you come._

He held her there against the wall in a death grip, his head locked in her neck, breathing down her neck in a sad attempt to reel his passions in before they really got the better of him.

“I’m gonna go,” he whispered, finding his resolve not a second too late. That resolve to put her back onto her feet and keep his hands to himself. Thank God for it.

 

He still allowed himself the luxury of kissing her forehead, though, and whispered, because he couldn’t help it and it was true: “You drive me absolutely crazy.”

And then on the last of his facilities, he managed to leave.

 

He took a run on the beach and then a swim and a run again, trying to burn off the excess energy that had built up in his system that called for _Tessa, Tessa, Tessa._

 

Strike Three had been that energy running over, taking hold of him, making him weak and stupid and self-indulgent. The energy that made it unable for him to sleep most nights. Which was why he couldn’t help but notice that at a certain point of the night before this dreadful morning he was trying to somehow survive now, Tessa had started moving beside him. Ever so slightly on the mattress beside him. And then...then she’d made those sounds. Quiet at first, so quiet that he wasn’t sure. But he was wide awake anyway, just at the concept. That she could be… and right beside him, too. All his effort of controlling his body’s reactions to her was null in the face of that, in the face for the idea that she was touching herself right there in bed with him.

 

He was hard and petrified and holding his breath within moments. And then she breathed out on a low moan and the mattress shifted and he surprised himself more than her probably by tightly whispering her name into the dark.

“Tessa.”

She froze instantly and he felt terrible. But more than that, he felt aroused. So aroused that when she stopped, he got needy and crazy and… forgot himself. In the worst way yet.

“No, don’t stop,” he whimpered, like a pervert, and then his hand moved to land on hers on its own. “Please, let me…” He didn’t know what he wanted her to let him do, only that it was something. Anything. _Everything,_ maybe.

 

“Yes,” she whispered and that’s last the moment he remembers clearly until after. The following is still hazy, touching her, making her keen and mewl and shake in his hand. Her moans, her sighs, the way her muscles clenched and unclenched around his fingers, how her scent filled the air, how she bucked her hips into his hand. How he got to fuck her with his fingers until she came on a startled gasp after what felt like minutes and hours at the same time.

"Wanna make you feel good," he vaguely recalls murmuring to her, him drunk on her pleasure, arguably more than she was maybe and he thinks that he had. Intellectually, he knows that she came quickly, very, very quickly. (And it’s probably because she’s done all the work before, building herself up before he got in to carry it over the finish line...but a small part of him was still proud to have gotten her there so fast.)

Not that it matters now. Because right after, he’d fucked it up. He is loathe to even remember, so he pushes it away, doesn’t want to remember her broken, disappointed voice asking him why he wouldn’t kiss her, or telling him to stop laughing at her as she cried after she came. (He made her cry from an orgasm...that’s also something he should not think about if he wants to keep his head.)

He doesn’t want to think about this morning and how she had cried then. He never wanted to make her cry. The fact itself is enough to make him want to hurl himself into the ocean and become a shark man, never return to her sight again because surely, she hates him now. He hates himself, for being so reckless and unfair. He knew that she wanted him. He also knew that they can’t, that he won’t. And he did it anyway. He’s such a fucking asshole. This is precisely the reason he has to keep his distance, something she is not yet able to see because she thinks with her nether brain right now. He’s not good enough for her, has never been. He’s always going to hurt her. She doesn’t understand that he isn’t saying no because he doesn’t want to have sex with her, touch her and kiss her and spend every waking minute with her. (God knows that not taking off her little thong she wore to bed now and fucking her senseless the night before had taken about all he had, too.) He’s saying no because no matter how amazing it would be, having sex with her isn’t worth losing her. He just wishes she would stop being angry at him for that.

 

He is trying to _save_ them, to save her. From him. He is trying to not mess it up, just like he said.

 _We already are_ , had been her reply...and then she left.

 

That night, moving his blanket over to the pull-out couch, he wonders if she understands. If he should make it clear that he thinks she’s the most beautiful woman in the world and that he would break from joy if he got to have her but he thinks better of it. Something tells her that wouldn’t help. So he just says: “I think it’s better if I sleep here for now.”

 

She let’s it happen and he has no idea what she thinks. He only hopes that she’s aware he’s not leaving their bed because he _doesn’t_ want to have sex with her. He hopes she knows he’s leaving because he wants it _too much._

 

Because if he sleeps next to her one more night, he won’t be able to hold himself back anymore. He is done, his fight is gone. He can’t ensure her emotional safety anymore which is why he needs to remove himself from the situation. Before he selfishly ruins them with how much he wants to crawl into her skin and come apart at her seams.

And he wants that. He wants her so badly, even hearing her breathe in the other bed in the dead of night is enough to make his blood boil.

 

 _Jesus Fuck_ , how much longer will he have to endure this?

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, bye now! I love you all!

**Author's Note:**

> Happy now? :D


End file.
